Strange Brew Read Online Free PDF Page A

than usual, as I’d expect from a wolf as far up the command structure as you are. I think you are vulnerable only to me.”
    “Which means?”
    “Which means when I touch you, I can see magic through your eyes… with practice, I might even be able just to see. It means that you can feed my magic with your skin.” She swallowed. “You’re not going to like this.”
    “Tell me.”
    “You are acting like my familiar.” She couldn’t feel a thing from him. “If I had a familiar.”
    Floorboards creaked under his feet as his weight shifted. His shoulder brushed her as he picked up the empty cup. She heard him walk away from her and set the cup on a hard surface. “Do you need more tea?”
    “No,” she said, needing suddenly to be home, somewhere she wasn’t so dependent upon him. “I’m fine. If you would call me a taxi, I’d appreciate it.” She stood up, too. Then realized she had no idea where the door was or what obstacles might be hiding on the floor. In her own apartment, redolent with her magic, she was never so helpless.
    “Can you find my brother?”
    She hadn’t heard him move, not a creak, not a breath, but his voice told her he was no more than a few inches from her. Disoriented and vulnerable, she was afraid of him for the first time.
    He took a big step away from her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
    “Sorry,” she told him. “You startled me. Do we still have the gum?”
    “Yes. You said she was on a boat.”
    She’d forgotten, but as soon as he said it, she could picture the boat in her head. That hadn’t been the way the spell was supposed to work. It was more of a “hot and cold” spell, but she could still see the boat in her mind’s eye.
    Nothing had really changed, except that she’d used someone without asking. There was still a policeman to be saved and her father to kill.
    “If we still have the gum, I can find Molly—the girl on your brother’s phone call.”
    “I have a buddy whose boat we can borrow.”
    “All right,” she told him after a moment. “Do you have some aspirin?”
     
    She hated boating. The rocking motion disrupted her sense of direction, the engine’s roar obscured softer sounds, and the scent of the ocean covered the subtler scents she used to negotiate everyday life. Worse than all of that, though, was the thought of trying to swim without knowing where she was going. The damp air chilled her already cold skin.
    “Which direction?” said Tom over the sound of the engine.
    His presence shouldn’t have made her feel better—werewolves couldn’t swim at all—but it did. She pointed with the hand that held the gum. “Not far now,” she warned him.
    “There’s a private dock about a half mile up the coast. Looks like it’s been here awhile,” he told her. “There’s a boat— The Tern , the bird.”
    It felt right. “I think that must be it.”
    There were other boats on the water; she could hear them. “What time is it?”
    “About ten in the morning. We’re passing the boat right now.”
    Molly’s traces, left on the gum, pulled toward their source, tugging Moira’s hand toward the back of the boat. “That’s it.”
    “There’s a park with docks about a mile back,” he said, and the boat tilted to the side. “We’ll go tie up there and come back on foot.”
    But when he’d tied the boat up, he changed his mind. “Why don’t you stay here and let me check this out?”
    Moira rubbed her hands together. It bothered her to have her magic doing something it wasn’t supposed to be doing, and she’d let it throw her off her game: time to collect herself. She gave him a sultry smile. “Poor blind girl,” she said. “Must be kept out of danger, do you think?” She turned a hand palm up and heard the whoosh of flame as it caught fire. “You’ll need me when you find Molly—you may be a werewolf, but she’s a witch who looks like a pretty young thing.” She snuffed the flame and dusted off her hands. “Besides,